6 Ways to Keep Your Body Guessing

July 26th, 2010 | Posted in Fitness tips, Headline | No Comments »

Don’t get complacent! Our bodies are always trying to trick us, to take the lazy way out, to relax and lie down and take naps and laze around the house when they should be out, burning energy and being active! And even if you are an active person, your body is an amazing thing — it can get used to anything, and suddenly those workouts that gave you such great results 6 months ago aren’t having the same effect!

So what do you do? You keep your body guessing! Here are 6 ways you can do just that:

Knock it Around a bit

Sure, we’ve only got one body and we don’t to constantly be beating it up, but at the same time, there are moments where you really do have to push it! This is fundamentally different than the “no pain, no gain” mantra, which is far too black-and-white — pain isn’t good, but some soreness from a great workout is often very desirable.

Our bodies will get nice and complacent if we just let them, and unless we constantly keep them guessing with new moves, new routines — and new workouts targeting new places — they’ll do everything they can to make things a little too comfortable.

When You Get Comfortable — Change, and Fast

Speaking of comfort — while it’s great to establish a comfortable workout routine and gain a lot of confidence through your workouts, you never want to get complacent. Once you do, you stop pushing yourself, and start taking it easy on your body when what you really need is smart, tough workouts to bust through to the next level.

If you find yourself thinking that every workout is suddenly “a breeze” and not much of a challenge anymore, it means your body has graduated to something a bit tougher. We didn’t stay in the same grade or school year for our entire lives, did we? Even though our bodies age every year, they also get better as we invest more into them, and they need to be continuously challenged.

Switch Your Days Around

Sometimes successfully keeping your body guessing means keeping your brain guessing, too. If you’re over-reliant on a very specific routine that involves particular days of the week, you also might be likley to fall off the wagon when you miss those days, or invest too much in a particular day of the week when it really should be about your body and your workouts.

Switch things up every once in a while — keep your brain on its toes, too.

Start Habits, Not Routines

Habit is great, because it means we’ve done it enough that the mental and physical blocks associated with a repeated activity are now very low — the barrier to entry has been greatly reduced.

But routine? Routine is when something starts to become so normal as to just be mindless, and that’s what we never want our workouts to become. You want exercise that is habit-forming, so you do it every day.

But you don’t want it to be routine-forming, so that it becomes unremarkable. Regular commitment and repetition is great, but complacency is the enemy!

Get Comfortable With Discomfort

Part of the problem with exercising and getting into the best shape of your life is that you’re going to be putting up with a bit more discomfort — soreness, some physical tiredness after a particularly big workout, or the fact that you can only fit your workout in one particular morning and will have to get up an hour earlier than normal.

This is part of it! Until you can get comfortable with the fact that you won’t always be comfortable while pursuing a goal of physical fitness, you can never really embrace it fully! Trust us, the rewards of those natural post-exercise highs and the great body you’ll have at the end are worth all the discomfort in the world, and it’s really not that bad, either.

Listen To It, Don’t Coddle It

There’s no doubt you have to listen to your body. It’s fundamental — if you’re about to injure yourself, or you’re overdoing it — listen to your body and slow down or stop. There’s no question on that issue.

Where there is some wiggle room, however, is when your body is acting like a spoiled brat! And it does that, sometimes — and you need to know when not to coddle it! There are thousands — no, millions — of people out there who over-listen to their bodies when they should be challenging them, who give their bodies and brains every last bit of junk food and relaxation they demand, and who wonder why they can’t get in shape.

Listen to your body when it’s trying to tell you something important, but refuse to spoil it when it’s being a big baby!

Talk to me!

How do you keep your body on your toes, keep it guessing and energized week in and week out, year in and year out? Tell us some of your best strategies and we’ll feature them in a future article, and try and respond to them in the comments below!